CORDON-AND-SEARCH OBSERVED

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31862, 14 December 1968, Page 18

CORDON-AND-SEARCH OBSERVED

(N.Z.P. A. -Reuter— Copyright) NUI DAT (South Vietnam), Dee. 13. The slightly comic little man in the black pyjama suit strummed his guitar and gestured to the shinyeyed Vietnamese children in the marquee. They burst into a patriotic song, writes Terence Downey, an Australian Associated Press correspondent.

‘‘Vietnam. Vietnam. Vietnam is Number One." they sang, led by the little man. Outside the marquee, erected inside a barbed wire fence in a green paddock alongside the village of An Nhut a line of villagers passed through a tent, where Vietnamese police scrutinised their identification papers.

Those who had none were led into a hessian-screened compound to await further screening. Nearby, other villagers lined up outside a tent where an Australian Army doctor examined one of their num-

ber, a woman with a youngh baby. |i She was passed on to an,< open-air dispensary for medi-li cine. Nearby, an Australian ' Army dental team extracted ; teeth, many blackened by betel nut. ; A cordon and search opera- ; tion had descended on the I village at An Nhut, five miles 1 south of the Australian task 1 force headquarters at Nui i Dat. i For the last week, lines of peasants, conical hats bob- I bing. had been working in ’ the rice paddies, harvesting, i In the late afternoons, i j lines of two-wheeled ox carts 1

[piled high with sheaves of 'rice had plodded along the ; dusty roads through the padIdies to the village. With the harvest comes the Viet Cong, to extract rice and tax. It is time for the cordon-and-search operations to begin and the 9th Battalion, Royal Australian regiment, had walked down from Nui Dat through the night, to encircle the village before dawn. The villagers had some inkling of what was happening when three Viet Cong tax collectors trying to slip through the cordon opened fire. With the dawn a fleet of 'vehicles came into the village carrying soldiers who ! erected tents and barbed wire I barricades. A loud voice in the sky from a circling aircraft equipped with loudspeakers told the villagers not to be alarmed, but to leave their homes and assemble in the compound with their papers. ' Many ignored this and all [morning, as soldiers gingerly [searched each hou.-e, they dis- | covered people hiding and in 'ones, twos and threes. They were escorted to the com-

f pound by armed Diggers, who s in some cases carried a rifle ■ in one arm and a young child in the other. ! The job of the infantry 5 was to seal off the village, capture any Viet Cong they ‘ could and search the houses ‘ for arms and documents. [’ Many other units took over ■ the villagers. First, they had to be e screened by South Vietnamese police and intelligence. . Then they had to be kept j occupied while the day-long k search went on. P Medical and dental teams i from the Australian civil affairs unit examined the vilf lagers. They found several e cases of tuberculosis, includ--0 ing one in a six-year-old girl, e A psychological operations team was on hand and had f enlisted a cultural drama group and an armed propaj ganda team. These are South Vietnamr ese and it is obvious that the e South Vietnamese Govern-] i. ment is fighting fire with, 1 fire. y The armed propaganda! i- team members are all former, a Viet Cong who defected toj y the South Vietnamese Gov-i i- ernment. They are known as!

Hoi Chanh and know all the i answers. A group of them spoke! with a villager whose son had l joined the Viet Cong. He [ listened carefully and became more thoughtful. The cultural drama group' seem to be straight out of 1 Communist China, except [ they are anti-Communist. Dressed in black pyjama suits, two men and three girls, they played guitar and drums, sank folk songs, then led the villagers in patriotic songs and finally staged a little drama. The moral was obvious. The j villain was the Viet Cong. They put on two pro- 1 grammes, one for the children, the other for the adults. Whether the villagers accepted the sentiments, they obviously enjoyed the show. Spanish and United States Army and Air Force units are taking part in a four-day joint “search-and-destroy” tactical exercise tn the hills of I south-east Spain, to wipe out > supposed enemy guerrilla j forces. A total of 1500 | United States troops were i flown ni from West Germany to join 1100 Spanish troops lin the exercise.—Albacete I (Spain >, Dec. 13.